“Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore”
Alice Sebold’s novel is what gets murdered in Peter Jackson’s big screen adaptation of “The Lovely Bones”. Fans of the novel will applaud the casting of Saoirise Ronan as Susie Salmon, but will find little else to like in this CGI-heavy film.
14-year old Susie narrates the story about how she was murdered from a place called the “in-between” which is like a waiting room in heaven. Because there is no place like it on earth, there is also no location that would do it justice. So Jackson paints this world with CGI effects that are actually beautiful to look at, but those scenes are deadly dull compared with the reality scenes of the family dealing with the aftermath of their loss.
“The Lovely Bones” feels like two movies slammed together. One, the gritty and great “Silence Of The Lambs”, the other the not-so-great depiction of a CGI heaven in “What Dreams May Come”.
Stanley Tucci, usually seen in comedies, plays the serial killer. He likes to kill little girls. That’s all we really know about him.
There’s never any justification for murder or serial killings, but when those characters appear in movies for our entertainment, the best ones always have a motive for why they kill. No matter how far-fetched, as in “Silence Of The Lambs” when the killer was making a female suit from the skin of his victims, or the frighteningly thought-provoking speech Kevin Spacey gives in “Seven”, a serial killer’s motive is often more chilling than the crimes. Just look at the bizarre plot behind “The Stepfather”.
I don’t know if it’s a fault of the film or the novel, but Tucci doesn’t seem to have a motivation for killing Salmon. If he’s meant to be a sex offender, that issue is never even hinted at. That lack of reason is what makes “The Lovely Bones” into a conventional B-level serial killer movie. The psychology of the crime is missing. And there’s never any mystery as to who the killer is.
The story is set in the early 1970s where Susie is in love with David Cassidy and The Partridge Family. The soundtrack is filled with great 70s lost hits such as The Hollies’ “Long Cool Woman”. Mark Wahlberg returns to his 70s Dirk Diggler hair style. Susan Sarandon’s Grandma Lynn seems to have been downsized from the novel. She’s the best thing in this movie, yet she’s not in nearly enough of it.
“The Lovely Bones” will likely disappoint fans of the novel and cause others to wonder why the novel is so popular in the first place.
DVD Double Feature: 1998’s “What Dreams May Come” is also not a great movie. But if you like the film of “The Lovely Bones”, you might enjoy this as well. It’s a depressing movie starring Robin Williams as a man who loses his children in a car accident, then dies himself to try and find them in heaven. The gorgeous CGI effects of heaven won an Oscar.
